A FRESH TRY: Yang Yunbiao, head of the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative in Fuyang City, east China's Anhui Province, introduces Robert's Rules of Order to the village (GENG YUHE)

WRITTEN RECORD: The book Operable Democracy, which is written based on the experience of adopting Robert's Rules of Order in Nantang Village, is published in April 2012 (JIANG XIAOYING)

On May 2, a small meeting attended by seven people was held in Nantang Village in Fuyang City, east China's Anhui Province. They were discussing how to involve more senior villagers in the organic chicken-raising industry.

The host of the meeting, Yang Yunbiao, is the head of the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative, an organization set up in 2007 to develop the village's economy.

Xu Changqiang, a 29-year-old man from southwest China's Guizhou Province, attended the meeting. As the owner of a chicken farm in Guizhou, he was sent to Nantang to share his experience in poultry farming. "I think the first thing in raising chicken is to learn how to prevent chicken diseases," said Xu at the meeting. Before he continued, Yang interrupted him.

"Xu, this is not the topic of this meeting. We'll discuss that later," said Yang, who then added that each person had only two minutes to state their idea.

This was the first time Xu attended a meeting in this village and he found the format of the meeting was very different from similar gatherings in his hometown.

"In my hometown, the meetings are mostly chaotic. Some people are too loud and some are too silent and no matter what we discuss, it is the village head who makes the final decision," Xu said.

However, in Nantang, although Yang is the head of the cooperative, he cannot make a unilateral decision on any issue and has to listen to all the attendants' opinions. Finally those present vote to make a final decision and all attendants have to follow the same rules regardless of their age and position in the village.

New-style meetings

Until just a few years ago Nantang's meetings were no different from those in any other Chinese village. "When we set a topic for a meeting, normally people would start talking about some other things and some people talked for almost half an hour and many other people didn't even get a chance to talk. Fights broke out in quite a few cases," Yang said, who once almost dismissed the cooperative.

All the changes came in 2008, when Yuan Tianpeng came to the village.

Yuan, then 36 years old, graduated from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 1998. After working for one year in the China Post Group, he quit and went to study at the University of Alaska in the United States for a master's degree.

At Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Yuan was chairman of the Students' Union and participated in meetings almost every week on the union's activities and the arrangement of the its funds. "The meetings were mostly not effective at all. Attendants either complained a lot or talked about other things for a long time," Yuan said. "When I asked them to bring out some constructive ideas, few people could do that. This made me feel frustrated."

At the University of Alaska, Yuan was enrolled in the Students' Senate and found the organization's meetings were held in a totally different way.

The head of the senate had no right to make decisions. His or her job was only to announce the beginning and ending of the meeting and to organize people to speak and vote. Everybody gets the chance to speak and different ideas will all be taken into consideration.

It was the first time Yuan got to know Robert's Rules of Order, which were set by an engineering officer, Henry Martyn Robert, more than 200 years ago. After failing to preside over a public meeting in his community, Robert decided to study parliamentary law and find out an effective way to hold meetings. Finally, he completed the book Robert's Rules of Order, which has become the basis for rules governing conventions in the United States.